If someone were to start playing from scratch, how long would it take them to enjoy the end-game?

Hey there, forum-goers. I wanted to get one of my RL friends back into WoW (they used to play in the old xpacs and are curious about the current game + consider coming back for slands), and I wondered how much do they need to do. Their goal would be probably to run a couple low-mid mythic+, attempt the normal raid, maybe get N’zoth curve before the release of next raid. I can to an extent help them out with the gearing process by boosting through a few dungeons/coming along for the raids, but I am more than aware of the amount of time-gating we currently have in the game.

So, how long would it take before the friend can attempt casual normal/heroic raiding if they start from scratch within the next few days? They probably don’t have the aspiration to touch mythic/rated arenas, so the absolute BiS stuff won’t be needed.

It depends on the person. I switched to EU only a few weeks ago and have been having tons and tons of fun. I slowly grind my way towards the cloak at the moment, and whenever I cannot settle down for long-time questing or am bored, I just zip to any old raid I want. It’s been super! What matters most is that you never put yourself in the mindset of rushing.

:sun_with_face:

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If you’re prepared to fly them around in BFA areas, I’d guess that it wouldn’t take more than a couple of days (maybe a week). As long as you do the Nazjatar opening and go and get the cloak as soon as you hit 120, the game seems to start showering you with reasonable gear from world quests and the like. Essences are the most time-gated part, but if you’re prepared to boost your friend through dungeons and visions then they should be able to put something in all the slots reasonably quickly.

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I think it depends in how much time the person has and what the priorities are.

I pretty recently came back and even when iLvl was my priority, I still was doing reputation farms to get flying first.

I think I geared this druid up in like a month to where I am now. I did play maybe 3 to 4h a day approx. It’s all just guessing tho. And to be fair. Just let him hop on the train and have fun before SL begins (:

Leveling takes ~30h, in 3 days at max level you can get normal raid quality gear if you know what you’re doing and in a week heroic quality gear through pugs.

If you want to min max it’ll of course take longer but the bare minimum is achievable pretty quickly all things considered

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Getting geared up to around 460 ilvl takes a weekend in M+.

Get the cloak to as high as possible then hit M+. In a week you won’t have BiS but you’ll be good to tackle most Nya HC.

Thank you all for the advice! Although, what I also wondered about are the things that we have all done in previous patches, like world quests unlocks/essences and the likes. Does the friend need to do, like, the entire world quest unlock or war campaign in order to progress into further patches? I am somewhat familiar with the process of currently gearing an alt, but I am not too sure about starting off a char on an account that hasn’t even entered any BfA zone.

I’m currently playing with a real life friend that came back to WoW after a long break.

Depends on how much you play.
Leveling and gearing take few weeks (3 days for leveling, 2 or 3 weeks to get decent ilvl for Heroic raids); if you have a Tank you can Party sinc and help them level through dungeons.
At max level they should get all the quests they need.

First you want them to do Nazjatar quest in order to be able to start 8.3 content.
You can help them with all those quest if you have Party sinc enable.
The only quest you cannot help is Ra-den quest (Ra-den is not on the Throne).

After that you can do Visions with them and play M+.
I’m doing low keys on Alliance (my friend loves his Alliance Human Paladin :upside_down_face:), it’s doable.

Regarding essences, they will get essence by completing quest: Magni quests for Flame, Nazjatar quest for Memory, Rajani and Uldum quest for Breath, etc.
They need to level up them as we did on last patches. However, Vision of Perfection drops even without completing Mechagon starting quest.

As far as I know, completing War-campaign is not required but they should do the first three quests in order to unlock opposite Faction zones.

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So I can just take them through heroic Workshop and they’ll get it?

Yes.
I did that yesterday, as Party leader you can select Workshop. They’ll get the essence if it drops.

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Depends how much you help them. My wife took 4 months from level 1 to mythic raiding

Oh… That may be a slight problem. If they’ve not done anything this expansion then they probably will have to do all the questing involving in getting the three zone reps to friendly and whatever else was required to unlock world quests. I’m not sure if you can start Nazjatar without those.

If they hit 120 before the timewalking events are over they can get ilvl 410 from the vendor and 425 from dungeon drops, while their gear doesn’t matter for the dungeon since everything is being scaled down. This can help them with non-azerite gear slots, makes it easier to get the cloak.

As for Raiding I can’t say as I’ve never been really interested in that so far.

My honest opinion, i would say 1-2 months depending how fast they level, let them level in a way they feel comfortable, and get to know the game mechanics.

I myself got 2 work colleagues to start playing recently and their still low level trying to figure some of the more difficult stuff out.

And encourage them and tell them their doing a good job to get them to keep leveling :sweat_smile: :joy:

Ok if they already played wow before id say 1-2 weeks(if they get boosted for gear)

No, IIRC world quests can be unlocked as soon as you hit 120 right now. I went with my DH to Nazjatar without ever stepping foot into Stormsong Valley.

Again pretty sure you can do this as soon as you hit 120. I would suggest gearing up a bit or having a friend to help as going to Nazjatar with only questing gear you got along the way can be a bit rough.

I can again suggest Timewalking as an easy way to get gear solo as ilvl doesn’t matter when doing Timewalking content.

Depends on playstyle. I have a former coworker who had his friends convince him to start playing WoW (Though it seems he used to play on private WoltK servers in the past). They helped guide him through and he got to 120 in about a few weeks.

Can’t say I agree with the playstyle as you kinda blaze through the content.

Personally even after a year of playing I’m still not committing to endgame content because there’s so much story I have yet to experience.

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That’s true if you have a character on your account that has unlocked them. If you’ve not played any of BFA, I think they still make you jump through all the hoops.

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Well I guess that’s true then, but if you know that beforehand you can do those while leveling 110-120 so that’s a really good advice.

Seems like doing the 3 intro war campaigns is also a requirement. Again you can do those while leveling.

On your first character, you need the three Friendlies plus the three Footholds to unlock Nazjatar, but those are only an hour each at most, and can be done while levelling 110-120, so call that 6 hours, and part (most!) of your levelling.

An hour in Nazjatar unlocks Essences, at which point you can start 8.3.

It’s not terrible, if you don’t wait for flying.

Actually acquiring the Essences is definitely a waiting thing, though. You can’t buy them with Echoes unless your main has already earned them.

I advised a completely new player a month or so ago who got 2 characters from just-dinged to Flying + Cloak + Essences + 440+ in exactly 12 days (but that was during the Bonus Rep period, which helped a lot with the Flying speed). I did not “help”, apart from a couple of imitial fly-arounds to introduce WQs. I just explained what to do next, and how.

But the bigger questions, as Furreal and Caylía pointed out, is what type of player they are - slow, fast - what they enjoy, how much time they have.

However, I’m sure that 110-120 with 440 level gear should be do-able inside a month, for most people.

I mentioned that too!

Elf bias :rage:

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Sorry, must have missed that among the pre-WQ back and forth.

It’s not bias when your race is simply the best! :stuck_out_tongue:

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